Grown Kids and Upper Park

The last two nights we've gone up to Upper Bidwell Park for the sunset to walk and bike along Big Chico Creek and along the park road. It is true that Chico is loving its park to death - we humans cause a lot of erosion along the creek banks and trails. Still, these last two early evenings have really been reviving. It's so beautiful up there! It's the best thing about Chico.

On Saturday I ran into Orien's good friend Nadia at Farmer's Market with her mom Marianne and sister Marisa. It is so good to have our "kids" home.

Plus Orien and I got to meet Ema and Cedars' daughter Fionna together. Ema and Orien were best of buddies through most of their childhoods. Ema is a beautiful mom and of course Fionna is gorgeous too.

One more time and with feeling I want to say how grateful I am to be alive and healthy and to have such a wonderful opportunity to live. Peace and Well Being to you also and to your children and those you love.

Thanksgiving

It is sooo Good to have Orien home and to have had Thanksgiving together with a lovely sweet crowd of people. My favorite part was the "friends grace" that brought out what many were most grateful for.

Michael's been working on our roof. He said to explain that the little veggie vw didn't have a fuel clog but it was really an air leak in the fuel filter. So there.

Michael took this photo of us first generation Riparians saying hi to one of the former foster children who is now a mom herself and living in Iowa.

I just did a radio show with my dear Laurel Avalon on KZFR about the Breast Cancer and Early Exposures Conference I went to last week. There was so much important information that I started to stumble all over the topic. For now I'd say, keep your children lean, stay away from manufactured items that you don't know the ingredients of, have an excellent vacuum cleaner and fight like hell to get rid of the "chemicals of concern" while we still can, to bring back the health of wildlife, water, air and the earth. There is a 2012 looming that won't have such special effects... just a loss of health and lots of cancer and diseases. Keep Obama honest with your voice though... he will listen to science so this is THE time.

This is an orchard in Concow. The humans are still reeling from the forest fire that took out so many homes a year and a half ago but this little place, with bear piles of apple poop dotting the orchard... what a wonderful place after a rain!

Amy Goodman came to Chico last week. Here she is with wonderful body worker and friend, Weezie, in the lobby of the El Rey. If you look at the wealth of human capital, this tiny woman is a giant and jewell among us. Her integrity and hard work has allowed a venue for honest, in-depth reporting that exists nowhere else in the U.S. She is forging the way to getting the truth out and the niche she created is being widened by other alternative media. She came to fundraise for community radio KZFR and took nothing for herself but some book sales. Her new book is Breaking the Sound Barrier. Check it out!

I am happy to be in full Thanksgiving mode. Thank filled and still appreciating being able to put my photos and thoughts up here on the google blog. Thanks googlelandia.

Veggie VW

It's another change. My little veggie car needs to have an onboard mechanic... I attended an important conference on Early Environmental Exposures put on by the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Centers and was in the Bay Area for three days. At noon on Friday I left for home in a rain storm after various misadventures with the car, like having to cruise 10 gas stations before I could find diesel and then having to have a very nice homeless man help me get the car the last few feet to the pump. Also, some switching thing came apart so the car was on diesel when it was supposed to be on veggie which didn't help. I almost lost my life stalling out in traffic. The tow truck driver was a very interesting person from the Punjab so that made it seem more or less graced to spend some time learning about his life. Michael had to come down to Vallejo and diagnose and repair the fuel line clog.

This was more the sunny side of things, being at Fort Baker for the conference. Fort Baker is right inside the land mass of the Marin Headlands, a gorgeous place that looks out on the Golden Gate Bridge and across to S.F. It was military until it was converted to civilian uses in 2002. These are some views:

The information from the conference was far less tranquil. We are poisoning our children and wiping out wildlife by not banning carcinogenic products such as Bisphenol-A, Phthalates and dioxins, all of which are endocrine disruptors, which is to say nothing about the multiple halogenated flame retardant chemicals that are especially bad in California. While unregulated chemical exposure is concurrent with higher body fat and earlier puberty the breast cancer risks will continue to rise along with other disease states. To me the science is clear. Some things, like AB 1879, the California Green Chemistry Initiative, may help but how that will be implemented remains to be seen. In the meantime it is buyer beware.

For me, the meantime also means running my car on diesel until the warm weather of springtime and I feel bad about that even if it does have "good mileage.'

I should never complain. Look where I used to live! This is Stinson Beach. I was young then and relied in those days on hitch hiking.

The world is so beautiful! For me it just resonates my gratefulness to see sights such as these. A Thanksgiving through and through to and for you.

this day

There's a window of time now to disc and mow before the rains come so the earth is looking really ready and gorgeous before the first frost and drenchings. I couldn't bring myself to get rid of the mullen in the garden. It is so fuzzily beautiful.

Yesterday I went to a fashion show put on by breast cancer survivors. I clapped til my hands hurt for these brave and beautiful women.

Earlier in the week I went up to Quincy for work and stopped to take a photo of these little cairn fishermen in the Feather River. The golden deciduous trees were in their glory in the canyon.

And last weekend I went to just one speaker at the Sustainability Conference, Derrick Jensen. He inspired us to talk again about our energy situation here on the land and I'm motivated, even with the problems of battery technology, to get going on solar.

North wind; No rain

It's a good week for friend visits. Robert and Susan from Willow Creek came by on their way to the Sandhill Crane Festival in Lodi. We walked one of the Upper Bidwell Park trails on the day it was supposed to rain.

I had to get back early for this Comanche Creek meeting. The City of Chico is big on civility and so the process was very structured. This map, showing the Hegan Lane Industrial Park's continued designs on Comanche Creek was dismaying. The big woop is that they add a bicycle path to their road that is the same the voters put down in 2001, they just changed the name from Otterson Dr. Extension to East Park Ave. Extension...

Our friend Bill was also visiting from the East Side of the Sierra and Guthrie is here from Vermont. We will have a wonderful weekend here on the land with social, work day and meetings... There's lots good going on here at Riparia.

The summer garden is not only sprouting the cover crop it is going crazy with malva. Malva is a beautiful plant but it is very hard to pull out and not at all what I had intended for a cover crop. We'll stick the beautiful part here...

Lastly, the world is really irritating me. I'm being with my distress, feeling it coming in waves. Sensing deeper into it, into the energy of it instead of running out the "story." This political energy is a springboard for action for me. I will focus this week on getting the Goldstone report on Gaza accepted, watersheds and water, and war. I want to find a way to support returning veterans with traumatic brain injury and PTSD--and stop the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... with every cell that this northwind triggers. Peace to you. Peace to all peoples everywhere. Plan for the future and plan for peace.

Saints to Souls

One more opportunity to be alive in another beautiful time and place among the Blue Oak between sunset and the full moon.